It is too big for our leaders to ignore. Even though the jury found him not guilty it is not over. The family of the 17 year old will file a civil suit against him and they will find him guilty in civil court. NAACP is also talking to the FBI about Civil Rights charges against the coward.

http://globalgrind.com/news/naacp-urges-...mmerman-details

The man is innocent, just as OJ was innocent

The feds will never win a civil rights case against him. The incident took place in a gated community on PRIVATE property. For a civil rights violation to have occurred, it would have had to have happened on PUBLIC property. Check the statute and you'll see what I mean.

As far as the family suing him, I doubt the guy has any assets. How many wannabe security guards do you know who have any money?

And Florida is the BEST possible place to be to protect your assets. It's next to impossible to lose your home in a lawsuit. Why do you think OJ Simpson moved to Florida after he lost in court to the Goldmans?

Hi PB, Trayvon's family may consider filing a civil suit against Zimmerman. In that type of trial, they need only to prove that it is more likely than not that Zimmerman was negligent and such negligence caused Trayvon's death. In a criminal trial you must PROVE BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT - a civil suit is much easier to prove. We shall see.

Big Boy, I totally agree.

You are incorrect. He's "not guilty" as opposed to being innocent. There is a significant legal distinction.

Of course him being found Not Guilty has riteously posses the NAACP off beyond belief. Having that said, a Civil Suit will definitely be filed by the family which I honestly don't see panning out but Civil Rights were definitely violated and that will be a Supreme Court Case and he will most definitely lose that. But he won't get any prison time for it and ultimately the NAACP and everyone else will still be pissed and we won't ever hear the end of this shit.

You're also a moron. Under Florida Law (again something you know nothing about because you don't care about the law, you have a target), he is immune to civil suits as part of the Stand Your Ground Law that was passed several years ago. The jury found for self-defense. William A. Jacobson, the Law Professor at Cornell, wrote about this at length.

Go back to High School to learn the ABCs of law again. A Florida Statute governs civil liability in self defense cases (AND IT IS NOT NEGLIGENCE):

See Fla. Stat. 776.032

(1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who was acting in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using force knew or reasonably should have known that the person was a law enforcement officer. As used in this subsection, the term “criminal prosecution” includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant.

Additionally the loser of such a suit would:

"(3) The court shall award reasonable attorney's fees, court costs, compensation for loss of income, and all expenses incurred by the defendant in defense of any civil action brought by a plaintiff if the court finds that the defendant is immune from prosecution as provided in subsection"

I think to invoke this immunity they have to do a "Stand Your Ground" hearing. If not, a civil suit could be brought under a theory of negligence and not as an intentional act. Of course on the "stand your ground" issue there would be a constitutional challenge. Unless a bunch of plaintiff's lawyers want to do years of work and never get paid, a civil suit is probably a fool's errand. Zimmm doesnt have any money and even if he does a book deal he can distribute the money through a corporation to a trust of some kind.

Hey little nicky, I think u should go back to school in general.

Is that the best you got? Nothing of substance to say in response to the fact that you are clearly wrong along with being completely ignorant of the law? Ignorance of the law is fine all and all- but don't post topics about things you haven't a clue on the actual process.

Another breath of fresh air. This guy, who's black, was on the Michael Medved show today.



Jason Riley: Race, Politics and the Zimmerman Trial
The left wants to blame black criminality on racial animus and 'the system,' but blacks have long been part of running that system.
Wall Street Journal
July 15, 2013


George Zimmerman's acquittal of murder charges in a Florida court has been followed by predictable calls for America to have a "national conversation" about this or that aspect of the case. President Obama wants to talk about gun control. Civil-rights leaders want to talk about racial profiling. Others want to discuss how the American criminal justice system supposedly targets black men.

All of which is fine. Just don't expect these conversations to be especially illuminating or honest. Liberals in general, and the black left in particular, like the idea of talking about racial problems, but in practice they typically ignore the most relevant aspects of any such discussion.

Any candid debate on race and criminality in this country would have to start with the fact that blacks commit an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes. African-Americans constitute about 13% of the population, yet between 1976 and 2005 blacks committed more than half of all murders in the U.S. The black arrest rate for most offenses—including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes—is typically two to three times their representation in the population. The U.S. criminal-justice system, which currently is headed by one black man (Attorney General Eric Holder) who reports to another (President Obama), is a reflection of this reality, not its cause.

"High rates of black violence in the late twentieth century are a matter of historical fact, not bigoted imagination," wrote the late Harvard Law professor William Stuntz in "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice." "The trends reached their peak not in the land of Jim Crow but in the more civilized North, and not in the age of segregation but in the decades that saw the rise of civil rights for African Americans—and of African American control of city governments."

The left wants to blame these outcomes on racial animus and "the system," but blacks have long been part of running that system. Black crime and incarceration rates spiked in the 1970s and '80s in cities such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia, under black mayors and black police chiefs. Some of the most violent cities in the U.S. today are run by blacks.

The jury's only job in the Zimmerman trial was to determine whether the defendant broke the law when he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year in a gated community near Orlando, Fla. In cases of self-defense, it doesn't matter who initiated the confrontation; whether Mr. Zimmerman singled out Martin because he was a black youngster in a neighborhood where there had been a series of burglaries by black youngsters; or whether Mr. Zimmerman disregarded what the police dispatcher told him before he got out of his car. Nor does it matter that Martin was unarmed and minding his own business when Mr. Zimmerman approached.

All that really mattered in that courtroom is whether Mr. Zimmerman reasonably believed that his life was in danger when he pulled the trigger. Critics of the verdict might not like the statutes that allowed for this outcome, but the proper response would not have been for the jury to ignore them and convict.

Did the perception of black criminality play a role in Martin's death? We may never know for certain, but we do know that those negative perceptions of young black men are rooted in hard data on who commits crimes. We also know that young black men will not change how they are perceived until they change how they behave.

The homicide rate claiming black victims today is seven times that of whites, and the George Zimmermans of the world are not the reason. Some 90% of black murder victims are killed by other blacks.

So let's have our discussions, even if the only one that really needs to occur is within the black community. Civil-rights leaders today choose to keep the focus on white racism instead of personal responsibility, but their predecessors knew better.

"Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we've got to do something about our moral standards," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told a congregation in 1961. "We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323394504578608182550247030.html

Quote:



Blacks benefit from Florida ‘Stand Your Ground’ law at disproportionate rate

African Americans benefit from Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law at a rate far out of proportion to their presence in the state’s population, despite an assertion by Attorney General Eric Holder that repealing “Stand Your Ground” would help African Americans.

Black Floridians have made about a third of the state’s total “Stand Your Ground” claims in homicide cases, a rate nearly double the black percentage of Florida’s population. The majority of those claims have been successful, a success rate that exceeds that for Florida whites.

Nonetheless, prominent African Americans including Holder and “Ebony and Ivory” singer Stevie Wonder, who has vowed not to perform in the Sunshine State until the law is revoked, have made “Stand Your Ground” a central part of the Trayvon Martin controversy.

Holder, who was pressured by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other progressive groups to open a civil rights case against acquitted neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Martin, criticized Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law in a speech Tuesday before the NAACP.

The law was not invoked by Zimmerman’s defense team but was included in instructions to the jury.

“We must confront the underlying attitudes, the mistaken beliefs and the unfortunate stereotypes that serve too often as the basis for police action and private judgments. Separate and apart from the case that has drawn the nation’s attention, it’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhood,” Holder said to applause in his speech before the NAACP Tuesday.

“These laws try to fix something that was never broken. There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if — and the ‘if’ is important — if no safe retreat is available. But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common-sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat, outside their home, if they can do so safely. By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety,” Holder said.

“The list of resulting tragedies is long and, unfortunately, has victimized too many who are innocent. It is our collective obligation; we must stand OUR ground to ensure — (cheers, applause, music) — we must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence, and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent,” Holder said.

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012.

FS, these stats are meaningless. It is a dumb law regardless of who has benefitted.

Thank -you sir for your opinion. We have noted it and it will be sent along for their consideration.

Zimmerman acted recklessly and irresponsibly. Florida permitted him to own and carry a gun. But it did not give him a license to be a vigilante, or law enforcement training and the judgment that goes with it. Had he abided by the HOA's rule not to be armed while on patrol, and stayed in his car as the police dispatcher advised, Martin would be alive, Zimmerman would not have been charged, and America would have been spared more racial strife.

When I earned my CCW (Carry Concealed Weapon) permit, the instructor time and again emphasized responsibilities over rights, and when not to shoot over when to shoot. He said that 85% of shooting situations were morally and legally ambiguous, notwithstanding Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine. All of the responsible gun owners I know condemn Zimmerman.

TB,
Your opinion is just that yours. and like most around town it doesn't hit the mark as they say when you read it over.

Even the Judge would not let the words Vigilante be used in statements. Having a gun and carrying a gun had nothing to do with anything as you should know as a ccw permit owner. I said this many times in the past. Zimmerman did not have his gun out and no matter how many think that's way, he was not out there gun in hand hunting down Martin! It never came out until the altercation.
Twisting his move to enter the field of Law enforcement against him to sound like he was playing rent a cop is absurd. Zimmerman did noting but observe Martin because he felt that he was out of place in HIS gated tract. He never approached him, yelled at him or spoke to him in stopping Martin in any way.
Why don't people understand that?

Martin could have just kept on going and nothing would have happen that night! Just so, many people want to blame Zimmerman for not listen to dispatch. Not a crime but it maybe it would have had things pass with out a conflict some would say. So who started the attack? Come on we all know it was Martin so why come up with so much hype to push it toward Zimerman?

So my friend, please tell me what Zimmerman did wrong that we all have learned in taking our CCW classes? His pistol never came out until he felt his life was in danger.....so what the beef with all your friends? All of the responsible gun owners I know condemn Zimmerman.? Why.
Even police didn't just grab him up, you know why BECAUSE it was an OK shooting by the laws standards!

Hell man, no one wants to say it was good to have someone lose their life. It is a sad day when ever that happens.

Lets turn things around. What would you have done if you were attacked and was carrying>... Should everyone have waited until he was stabbed before reacting? When a person comes up to you and say You are going to die tonight...what is going on in your head?

and why would you have a ccw and be carrying if you would not use it to protect your life in such an attack?

First of all let's stop calling people names, like moron. It is especially inappropriate when you are the one, who is misinformed on the law.

A.)Zimmerman is not immune from a civil suit in Florida on the basis of the "Stand Your Ground" law. This law was not applicable to Zimmerman in the criminal trial and his attorneys did not pursue it or ask for a pre-trial or in camera proceeding to avoid culpability on these grounds. His defense was that he was immediately attacked, and so he defended on the basis of self-defense, an affirmative defense apart from stand your ground.

B.) The jury's verdict of not guilty is not binding on a civil jury in wrongful death. The jury found that there was insufficient to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. A much different standard is used in a civil proceeding. A jury may weigh the recklessness and lack of judgment by Zimmerman, which turnbull pointed out, and may determine that Zimmerman bears civil responsibility.

Oh yes, one more thing. It would be hard to retreat when you are on your back having your head banged up and down.
Here in New York we are to retreat if we can before taking a life.

I don't want to take this into a pro and anti gun issue which some seem to blame.

Under this accountthat is why the Stand Your Ground law didn't apply to the Zimmerman case.

As I've said before, the Stand Your Ground law is bad policy as it promotes violence and confrontation. Self-defense has always existed as a defense for those whose lives or the lives of others are at risk. But it's better policy to avoid potentially violent confrontations than encourage them, and that is why the biggest opponents to stand your ground are police departments and district attorney offices.

so much sense, logic and reason in such an economically brief paragraph. well done.

By the way, that Rachel girl who was the trial's first witness was interviewed recently and stated that she thought that Martin threw the first punch.

Klydon1, You are correct:

A Civil Trial only requires a "Preponderance of Evidence" to win.
In a Criminal Trial, the person has to be found "Guilty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt".

However, in a Civil Trial, what good will it do if Zimmerman loses? How are they going to collect from Zimmerman? What are they going to collect? His underwear?
Winning a civil suit AND COLLECTING on a Civil Suit are two entirely different things, my friend.

We need more self-defense laws, not less.

Maybe Zimm gets a book deal and they tap into that.

Kly or DT,


Couldn't the parents file a civil suit for the mere purpose of holding the GZ responsible? Does it have to be for large sum of money? Isn't it a matter of principle? If an amount must be set go real low, if even $20 a month for life. Can they do that?



TIS

hmm, this seems to go against the "evil, oppressive white man" theory...

In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous of the NAACP are calling on the black community to rise up in national protest.

Yet they know — and Barack Obama, whose silence speaks volumes, knows — nothing is going to happen.

"Stand-Your-Ground" laws in Florida and other states are not going to be repealed. George Zimmerman is not going to be prosecuted for a federal "hate crime" in the death of Trayvon Martin.

The result of all this ginned-up rage that has produced vandalism and violence is simply going to be an ever-deepening racial divide.

Consider the matter of crime and fear of crime.

From listening to cable channels and hearing Holder, Sharpton, Jealous and others, one would think the great threat to black children today emanates from white vigilantes and white cops.

Hence, every black father must have a "conversation" with his son, warning him not to resist or run if pulled over or hassled by a cop.

Make the wrong move, son, and you may be dead is the implication.

But is this the reality in Black America?

When Holder delivered his 2009 "nation-of-cowards" speech blaming racism for racial separation, Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald suggested that our attorney general study his crime statistics.

In New York from January to June 2008, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24 percent of the population. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirms Mac Donald's facts. Blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crimes in the city, he says, but only 85 percent of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics.

And these may involve the kind of pat-downs all of us have had at the airport.

Is stop-and-frisk the work of racist cops in New York, where the crime rate has been driven down to levels unseen in decades?

According to Kelly, a majority of his police force, which he has been able to cut from 41,000 officers to 35,000, is now made up of minorities.

But blacks are also, per capita, the principal victims of crime. Would black fathers prefer their sons to grow up in Chicago, rather than low-crime New York City, with its stop-and-frisk policy?

Fernando Mateo, head of the New York taxicab union, urges his drivers to profile blacks and Hispanics for their own safety: "The God's honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics."

Mateo is what The New York Times would describe as "a black Hispanic" Yet he may be closer to the 'hood than Holder, who says he was stopped by police when running to a movie — in Georgetown.

Which raises a relevant question. Georgetown is an elitist enclave of a national capital that has been ruled by black mayors for half a century. It's never had a white mayor.

Is Holder saying we've got racist cops in the district where Obama carried 86 percent of the white vote and 97 percent of the black vote? And his son should fear the white cops in Washington, D.C.?

What about interracial crime, white-on-black attacks and the reverse?

After researching the FBI numbers for "Suicide of a Superpower," this writer concluded: "An analysis of 'single offender victimization figures' from the FBI for 2007 finds blacks committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study."

Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.

If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides — in America?

And if the FBI stats for 2007 represent an average year since the Tawana Brawley rape-hoax of 1987, over one-third of a million white women have been sexually assaulted by black males since 1987 — with no visible protest from the civil rights leadership.

Today, 73 percent of all black kids are born out of wedlock. Growing up, these kids drop out, use drugs, are unemployed, commit crimes and are incarcerated at many times the rate of Asians and whites — or Hispanics, who are taking the jobs that used to go to young black Americans.

Are white vigilantes or white cops really Black America's problem?

Obama seems not to think so. The Rev. Sharpton notwithstanding, he is touting Ray Kelly as a possible chief of homeland security.

http://news.yahoo.com/black-americas-real-problem-isnt-white-racism-070000529.html

Sometimes civil suits are brought for reasons unrelated to collecting monetary damages. Even if Zimmerman doesn't earn much, a judgment against him will be a tight leash on him for the rest of his life, adversely affect his ability to apply for credit and conduct business. There would be added attention to his family finances and taxes that will be a huge inconvenience. Also, with a judgment against you, which you can not pay, your ability to seek employment is hurt.

Some people file suits for the judgment, as opposed to the reward. I've filed suits for people, who have not paid my wife in her business, knowing that we wouldn't likely see a dime. But we filed as it may discourage others from withholding payment, and it would make life inconvenient for the individuals, who refused to pay a just debt.

You know FIVE, your just wasting your time. These People don't care about anything. They have a mind that is in spin cycle mode and could care less about real facts or reasons.

In fact that is the reason that the facts and figures are the way they are. They don't give a shit either! Plain and simple it is all about what they want and how they feel. Right or wrong they do what they want and believe what they want. Facts don't mean anything to them. We will just blame someone else for EVERYTHING!

It is the blind being whip up. A nation beging held hostage by a select group and their simple minded followers. Lets cause unrest, let boycott, lets hit back and put a $$ figure on Zimmerman. WE didn't get what we want and we don't care what anyone tells us we have been wronged!

You know every parent wants to think that their lost should have some sort of meaning. and I am sure that is the way Martins parents feels also. Who could blame them.

But people will only take so much of this unrest and hurting other people who had nothing to do in this and then the shit will really hit the fan.